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Easy Homemade “Ice Cream”

Ice cream is one of those treats that’s SO. EASY. to overeat. Or is that just me? I mean, 1/2 a cup is a serving?! Who ever eats just half a cup of ice cream, really?

You can imagine how thrilled I was to discover this trick…homemade “ice cream” that’s easy and cheap to make. AND healthy!

Do you have any of these lying around?

We eat lots of bananas at our house, but there always seem to be one or two stragglers that don’t get eaten before they are too ripe (I personally like mine a little on the green side). But ripe is the name of the game for this recipe!

Slice ripe bananas (as many or as few as you want!) and place the slices in a baggie and stick the baggie in the freezer. Picture below is three bananas, if I remember correctly…I keep the baggie in the fridge and add to it until we’re in the mood for “ice cream.”

Allow the banana slices to freeze at least overnight. You want them really firm and frozen all the way through.

When you’re ready for a yummy dessert, toss as many of the slices as you want into a food processor (I haven’t tried this in a blender, but it may work as well).

For this batch, I added some flavor (plain is great, too). I added about half a teaspoon of vanilla extract.

And two tablespoons of crunchy peanut butter.

Slap the lid on that baby and you’re ready to blend! Homemade ice cream, here we come!

I usually use the “pulse” feature on my processor so I can scrape the sides occasionally.

At first, it will just look like chunks of frozen banana, but keep going and be patient. 🙂 Each course of pulsing and scraping the bowl gives you a creamier texture.

After just a few minutes, you have something that looks like this:

I’d say that’s ICE CREAM, wouldn’t you?! I put a pinch of mini chocolate chips on mine…there are few combos that are as divine as peanut butter and chocolate, am I right?

Here’s what a batch of plain (no vanilla or peanut butter, just bananas!) looks like:

Toss some in a bowl, and get your cold, creamy dessert fix without the guilt! This also counts as a serving of fruit! Isn’t that awesome?!

You could sprinkle this with a little cinnamon or some low-sugar granola or even crushed nuts.

If you want more of a health benefit, you could add additional fruit. I’ve added frozen strawberries to the processor before and blended them up with the bananas, but you could top your ice cream with fresh berries or other fruit afterwards, too. You could add a touch of honey or lime juice or flax seeds (omega 3s!). You could even experiment with other extracts besides vanilla.

My in-house critic couldn’t get enough of this yummy treat. Good thing it’s homemade and healthy!

If you give this trick a try, I’d love to hear what you think! Did you come up with any creative combos?